Siren Song: A Different Scandinavian Crime Novel (30 page)

Don’t worry.

Yours,

Agnes.

Since finding the note, Lena has fallen asleep staring at it every night, always failing to make sense of its meaning. One day, she will find Agnes and ask her. Or Agnes would find her.

The nurse clears his throat. “It’s time,” he says quietly.

Lena nods. “I’ve got to go.” She wants to tell John to get better, but she cannot find the right way to phrase the words.

“Do you think I’ll ever get out?” John asks. “That things will go back to normal?”

Lena sighs, raises her hand, and lets it fall. “You’re asking the wrong person,” she says. “I’m not a counsellor.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lena pauses and shrugs. “I don’t think what happened out there,” she says and nods at the window, “was the real you. There are bad sides to all things. Even people. You’ll just have to convince them you’re yourself again.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll have to convince me too,” Lena adds. “Chasing you was hell. Keep together, and hope for the best.”

A small smile flashes across John’s face at Lena’s words. “I have hope,” he says. “That much I know.”

“Good. You take care now.” Lena returns his smile and leaves the room.

When she exits the hospital, the bird she saw outside John’s window is flying above the building, gliding on the still air in a perfect circle. Beside it flies another bird, smaller and fairer, keeping close as if pleased to have found a comrade in the sky.

She watches the birds until the cold forces her to get inside her car and turn on the heat. A minute later, she leaves the parking lot and slowly makes her way back to the larger road. Her desk waits. Tasks are filling up her agenda. Traces are being left and injustices committed. She will deal with them one at a time.

Just like the demons shackled in her mind.

*

John watches from his window as Lena’s car leaves the parking lot. When the vehicle has melded with the grey of the woods, he lies back on his bed and exhales.

A strange woman. Part granite wall, part strangely long-lost friend. She was holding back, and yet she craved to talk. He hopes she will come back. She probably would. If only he could confide in her and explain the sights he has seen.

But that will not happen. His story is one that never can be retold. Any listener would think he had gone mad again. He knows his vivid experiences define him, but they themselves were indefinable. And while he has returned to the world he knows, part of his dream has escaped too. That would be a sure sign of lunacy to anyone but him.

So he will be silent. Mundane, submissive and courteous. He wants out, back to life beyond these walls. Failing now is not an option; he has made it back home, into a world he recognizes, and here he will stay.

Reaching out, he switches off the light and watches the shadows creep out from the corners. In his room it is always half-dusk. He studies the ceiling while he listens to the wind brushing against the window. People pass in the hallway outside his room. Cars come and go. The classical music echoes in the distance.

A bird flutters close to the windowpane, and John laughs quietly. He feels the presence like the touch of a feather against his thoughts.

“Are you there?” he asks.

“Until the end,” Miriam whispers.

“What do you make of her?”

“The Detective? Very chirpy woman, I have to say. She probably eats sanding papers for breakfast.”

John nods. “She’s rough around the edges,” he says, “but I like her.”

“She is also damned moody, if I may say so. Why are you smiling?”

“Because she thinks I might leave this place one day.”

“You will. I’ll show you how.”

“Thank you. Miriam?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t ever leave.”

There is a short silence, filled with the sense of a smile.

“I’m always here,” she says. “Just come looking.”

*

THE END

Thank you

…for reading this novel – I hope you enjoyed it!

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Acknowledgements

This story sprang from several ideas that orbited me for some time before they, as ideas do, decided to dance, collide, and bounce off in new and unexpected directions.

All locations in Stockholm are real. As for Hell, impressions may vary.

Thank you

Tove Jorgensen: explorer in arms, charter of stars, midnight muse.

Also

Class of ‘11, who taught me not to pull any punches

Marti Leimbach, who told me to run with this story

Pauline Nolet, proofreader extraordinaire

All members of XP regn (past, present and future), for evenings and nights spent elsewhere